CellBioGuy comments on Open thread, Oct. 03 - Oct. 09, 2016 - Less Wrong
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Not new, possibly not interesting to anyone beside me. A 2013 astrobiology paper that explores an odd corner of the Fermi Paradox. The paper explores the bizarre perspective that Earth life was seeded by extraterrestrial life (directed panspermia) as a form of information backup. Our biosphere's junk DNA, in this scenario, stores information valuable to the extraterrestrial system.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1303.6739
Junk DNA generally doesn't survive that long in evolutionary timescales because there's nothing that prevents mutations. It seems a bad information storage system.
Indeed it is seen easily when comparing multiple related species as it is that which changes very fast and seemingly randomly (and uniformly).